Hi Allan
On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Allan Third wrote:
> I get the impression from the wiki and mailing list that the PCI version
> of Nebula Electronic's DigiTV is supported under Linux. However, they
> also do a USB 2.0 version:
>>http://www.nebula-electronics.co.uk/information/info.asp?Code=0003>> which doesn't seem to work, although I assume the functional innards are
> basically the same.
Why do you assume that? Do you have any contacts to Nebula regarding the
box and they told you?
> From what I gather, the dvb-bt8xx driver with either the nxt6000 or the
> mt352 frontend (depending on how recent the DigiTV device is) ought to
> work.
Afaik the bt8xx is a PCI controller. I don't know much about it, but I
assume that it is not capable of being a USB controller as well.
Even though it could be possible, that they use it in their USB device,
but they most likely covered it by running another dedicated USB
controller.
The USB transfers and the USB subsystem in Linux are completely different
and independent to the PCI subssystem (except the USB Host controller,
which can be settled on a PCI card).
> kernel: usb 3-4.4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address
> 5
That means, that a new, real USB2.0 device has been connected to the USB
bus and it has registered the Linux USB subsystem, but no driver claims
it.
Please run a lsusb -v on your system to gather more basic information on
the device.
> I just wanted to know whether anyone else has tried one of these devices
> in Linux, and with what success? Nebula's website seems to indicate that
> they're quite happy to give technical specs to help the development of a
> Linux driver - apparently they've already done so for the PCI version? -
> so I'm hoping it shouldn't be too difficult to get the USB version up
> and running if someone clever has a chance to look at it. :-)
Last year I asked them to provide specs and maybe a test device, but the
contact got stuck at some point.
> The output above was all produced using Linux 2.6.10 (default kernel on
> Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog.) Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's
> anything I can do, e.g., testing.
Yes. As I said, the output lsusb -v is a first start. If they offer
documentation for the USB command protocol they are using/invented, then
it could be easy to add support (e.g. by adding it to the
dvb-usb-framework ;) ).
For a first look you could also plug the device into a windows machine,
install the windows driver and do some usbsnooping. I'm always relying on
usbsnooping when adding support for a new device, even if I have docs from
the vendor, because often docs are incomplete and complex.
best regards
Patrick.
--
Mail: patrick.boettcher at desy.de
WWW: http://www.wi-bw.tfh-wildau.de/~pboettch/